Page 32 of Loving Netta Wilde

He took the cleaning cloth off her. ‘Always.’

‘Well, Colin looks like he’s had seven kinds of crap knocked out of him and I spent most of last night with him in A&E. When we got back, I had a row with Frank and, just to round the night off perfectly, I went home and had a pop at Doogie. It seems like the only person I’m not annoyed with at the moment is Colin.I’m actually beginning to feel sorry for him. And that is the most worrying development in all of this.’

‘Wow!’

‘Exactly. Two weeks ago, everything was rosy. Colin gets thrown out of his house and suddenly everything is not.’

‘Is it all Colin’s fault then?’

She threw him a scathing look. ‘Of course it is. It’s always Colin’s fault. If he hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have accused Frank and Doogie of beating him up.’

‘You accused them of beating him up? Ouch.’ Neil did an extremely over the top wince. It wasn’t the response she was hoping for.

‘What else was I supposed to think? Colin wouldn’t tell me who’d done it, so I assumed he was too scared to say. I put two and two together and…’ She caught Neil’s wide eye. ‘Yes, all right, I can see now that I was completely wrong. But in my defence, Frank’s been behaving very oddly and Doogie’s … well, he’s just being Doogie.’

‘In that case, who can blame you?’ At first glance, Neil’s face appeared serious but the twinkle in his eye was giving her notice that he thought the situation rather amusing.

‘You’re not helping as much as I thought you would, Neil.’

‘Oh I don’t know. We’ve already established you might have been a bit over zealous with your allegations.’

‘Yes, yes, okay. Any other observations, perhaps less painful for me to hear, that you’d like to pass on?’

‘Hmm. I guess it’s worth looking at Colin’s injury in a different way. It could just be coincidence. I mean he might have been mugged or got into a fight with some random. Why don’t you cast the net a bit further than home and try to pin it down to a time and place?’

‘So that is actually a good idea. We’ve got a family meeting tonight. I’ll run it by everyone then.’

‘And Frank. Perhaps try to understand why his behaviour’s changed.’

‘Oh I know why it’s changed.’

‘Yeah, but do you understand why?’

‘Yes. Probably. Maybe not entirely.’

The house was full when Netta got home from work. In the kitchen, her mum was cutting a hefty portion of steak and mushroom pie and lobbing it on a plate full of vegetables. She put the plate on a tray along with a pot of gravy and shouted: ‘It’s ready, Liza.’

Liza came in and picked up the tray. ‘Shall I tell Frank to come over?’

‘Yes please. Dinner’s going on the table now so come straight back.’ She gave Netta a cursory glance. ‘It’s for Colin. Much as I dislike him, I can’t have him wasting away.’

The table was soon loaded with the remaining pie and another that was untouched, and all the trimmings to make a big feast. If they were going to have a meeting, it was to be done on a full stomach. It was her mum’s way. Whatever problem needed to be solved, there was always an appropriate food accompaniment to help find the solution.

Frank came back with Liza. He hung around the kitchen, not looking at Netta and generally getting in the way. Doogie was in the lounge talking to her dad and Will, so he was naturally going to avoid retreating to there. When her mum called everyone to the table his relief was obvious. And so probably was Netta’s.

It was only when the dogs assembled around the table, as they often did when food was in the area, that Netta noticed an absence. ‘Where’s Spike?’

‘I left him with a friend for a few days to give Betty a break,’ said Doogie.

‘I didn’t know you had any friends in Birmingham, besides me.’

‘Well, it’s a client really, the one I met with today, but he offered.’ Doogie cut into a roast potato. Another one who couldn’t look at her.

‘Right, okay. Does he live far?’

‘North side of the city.’

‘Oh, so near your mum then?’

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